“Go on, Harry; that is very interesting,” said she innocently.
“No, it isn’t; you don’t know what I was talking about,” he returned sullenly.
“Yes, I do, Harry. You were talking about—horses,” said she, with what she thought a safe guess.
But her husband looked blacker than ever.
“I wasn’t talking about horses, as it happens. It shows how much you care what I say. I’m much obliged to you for letting me see that I bore you. Stop! I’ll get out;” and he tossed off his rugs.
“No, no, don’t, dear Harry! Let me drive you home. It is only a little way; but it is too far for you to walk yet. I’m very, very sorry I was so inattentive; but the fact is I—I have something on my mind that is troubling me; and so——”
“Have you, Annie?” he asked anxiously. “What is it?” Then, noticing the expression of his wife’s face, his manner changed, and he cried roughly, “It is a lie! It is an infernal excuse! Stop, I tell you, or I’ll jump out without your stopping! Now I’ll be hanged if I let you drive me out any more! You are just a little hypocrite, pretending to listen and be so sweet, when all the time you don’t care what I say if I talk myself hoarse. Go and talk your learned jargon with George, and William, and—the deuce, if you like! I’m going to Joe Green’s, the blacksmith.”
She had stopped, seeing it was of no use to try to argue with him in this mood, and that to disobey him would only be to see him break his neck before her eyes. And she drove home full of remorse, after watching him vault over a gate to take a short cut to the village, and making one more effort to stop him by a piteous cry of “Harry!” of which he took no notice.
To the blacksmith’s—where Susan Green lived! This, then, was the end of his revived affection for herself, that the very first walk he took led him straight back to the vulgar charms of the blacksmith’s daughter.
It was a bitter, unpleasant thought, even for a wife not sufficiently fond of her husband to be jealous. It was a humiliation which brought up in her mind the image of the one man who thought her charms superior to those of any other woman. She did not feel jealous, but insulted by the rude speech of her husband, who, after she had used every care, every charm at her command to fulfill her duty to him in sickness and in convalescence, rewarded her with a coarse taunt and an openly expressed intention of leaving her for the society of a girl of low birth and not unspotted name.